Lawrence Stern Stevens, an artist of Detroit, narrowly escaped death near Aix-la-Chapelle at the hands of a crazed German lieutenant, by whom he was suspected of being a spy.
Stevens left Brussels on Aug. 24 in an automobile. He was accompanied by a photographer and a Belgian newspaper correspondent, and his intention had been to make sketches on the battlefield. His arrest at Laneffe thwarted this plan. He underwent a terrifying ordeal at the hands of his demented captor, although he was not actually injured.
On the evening of Aug. 24 he was court-martialed and sentenced to death and held in close confinement over night. Early on the morning of Aug. 25 he was led out, as he supposed, to be shot, but the plans had been changed and instead he was taken before Gen. von Arnim. After being forced to march with German troops for two days, Stevens fell in with a party of American correspondents at Beaumont, from which point he traveled to Aix-la-Chapelle on a prison train, and eventually reached Rotterdam and safety.
SAD PLIGHT OF FRENCH FUGITIVES
M. Brieux, the noted French dramatist, who witnessed the arrival at Chartres of a train full of fugitives who had fled from their homes before the German advance, described his experience for the Figaro. The fleeing people gathered round him and told him stories and he wrote his impressions as follows:
"Children weep or gaze wide-eyed, wondering what is the matter. Old folks sit in gloomy silence. Women with haggard cheeks and disheveled hair seem to belong to another age.
"They tell of invaders who scattered powder around or threw petroleum into their houses and then set them afire.
"And when did this happen? Yesterday! It is not a matter of centuries ago in distant climes, but yesterday, and quite near to us. Yet one cannot believe it was really yesterday that these things were done."
One of the fugitives explained to M. Brieux why after the first hour of their flight she had to carry her elder child as well as her baby. She showed him a pair of boots.
"I felt the inside with my fingers," says Brieux. "Nails had come through the soles. I looked at the child's feet. They were dirty with red brown clots. It was blood."